With the hard work of recent weeks I've been trying to avoid current affairs as much as possible, which in my case mostly means not reading the SMH every M. I've been aware of the debate over health care reform in the US, but mostly just the madness-and-lies end of it. A debate at
jblum's lj was more edifying, because it meant discovering the many differences between the US and Australian health care systems. (IIUC, the major differences are that some health care is directly provided by the government in the form of public hospitals, and all residents have government-provided basic health insurance. Private health insurance is cheaper than in the US and doesn't restrict the patient's choice of providers.)
Another comparison, though, was chilling. You'll remember my comparing the comparatively high infant mortality rates of African Americans with the similarly high rates amongst Indigenous Australians. What I didn't realise is that the USA as a whole has a high infant mortality rate compared to other developed nations - 6.78 deaths per 1000 live births in 2004, compared to Australia's
4.7. A CDC report from October 2008,
Recent Trends in Infant Mortality in the United States, has the details.
I'm not sure to what extent the higher death rates of Black, Native American, and Puerto Rican babies explains the overall figure for the US. With those groups making up a large chunk of Americans, it would make more of a difference than the very poor rates for Indigenous Australians, who are only about 1% of our population. OTOH, in 2004, we had the
20th lowest rate in the world and the US had the 29th.
Between that unacceptable
ranking, the shameful state of health amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and the
suicide rate, Australia can't be too smug. But we must be doing something right - and both sides of American politics seem to
agree on making US health care a bit more like the Australian model.